Interior shader for The Great Gatsby

In 2013 I worked on The Great Gatsby, recreating New York of the mid 1920s. One of the tasks was to develop a shader that simulates the parallax of interior walls behind thousands of building windows. In short, its a simple texture raytracer. In fact it was quick and simple enough for a CgFx port so that artists can have an instant feedback when setting it up.

It was presented at an Autodesk event by our Lighting Lead and featured in Digital Media World interview:

“A custom shader we developed was a hologram shader for buildings. Since we didn't have time to model interiors for every building in Manhattan, surfacing artist Artur Vill took an idea from video games, starting from our flat windows and shop fronts and letting us dial in parameters for room depth, wallpaper variation, interior lights, curtains - all from a shader that worked correctly in stereo. Viewers barely notice it in the final shots, but would definitely notice if it wasn't there, and just accept that all the windows have a proper room behind them.”